Best cheapest guitar cables... No Mogami overpriced cables for me...

[Slobrain]

Hey Folks,

I have been using Belden guitar cables for years and gave a bunch of my guitar cables to other folks over the years till I found I have only the few left that I have been using.

Any suggestions to replacement cables that are not so costly as the Mogami stuff?

I have one cable with the label (low noise instrument cable made in the U.S.A.) not even sure who made that but its old and works well.

Thanks

Slo

[bob p]

I've been cutting wire off of the same big spool of Belden cable for decades. It's pretty stiff. I never thought too much about it.

One thing I do like about some of the guitar cables is that there are a lot of them seem a lot softer and more flexible. I never paid attention to the brand names, so I'd be interested in hearing which brands are the good ones.

[flyingdutchman]

In my opinion, a good guitar cable should have low capacitance, low microphonics, be very flexible, and tough.

In the past I've been using Klotz instrument cable: a rather thick but very flexible jacket, wrapped copper and conductive plastic screen, low capacitance core insulation. Best guitar cable I've ever seen. Not exactly cheap but not too costly either. No longer available 'round here.

Lately I'm using an Italian cable sold under the Milan/Tasker brand. Looks and feels much like the Klotz, but not quite as flexible. Less than 2 bucks a metre. No complaints from my clients.

[Leo_Gnardo]

USA-1 from Conquest. I order by 100 ft lengths (sometimes 200 or 300 ft) plus switchcraft connectors & wire up custom lengths & straight or angle connectors for myself & customers. If it's good enough for Sir Paul it's good enough for me. Besides black, brown, white, grey, all the kandy kolors are available. Google Conquest - fast friendly service. Note factory made cables whether Conquest or others tend to be made by workers that are trying to turn out a maximum number of cables per hour. You are always better off making your own, carefully and deliberately.

Connectronics in the UK also makes some very good reasonably priced flexible coax & mic cable. As far as I know, sold only in 100 meter rolls. Or more.

Used to use a lot of Belden 8410 coax and 8412 mic cable. Tough cable all right but not so flexible and took months of winding & unwinding for it to lose its spool memory - tended to coil up at the worst moments when new. 8410 was Eric Clapton's choice in the late 70's - early 80's. Also a pain to strip & straighten braid shielding, prep for soldering. OTOH a lot of my 8412 mic cable is still in use, as are a set of XLR to TRS patch cables I made for Le Mobile 32 years ago. Heck I even use a length of 8410 as my oscilloscope lead. The insulation is cracking but it's given me decades of trouble free service.

[bob p]

I just checked. My Belden cable is marked 8401. It's the same gauge/strand count as 8410 except that the shield is 72% vs. 80% and the jacket is PVC instead of EDPM. Capacitance is the same.

I've been using the same cables that I made in the mid 1970s and they've still got spool memory. I think I might have changed a Switchcraft plug on one of them, once. Otherwise I can't remember ever having to fix them.